I completely agree with the post on 6-5-08 - "Where Animals Come First" - what a crock.
As a former manager I realized during training that Petco could give a crap in regards to the health and welfare of the birds, small animals, reptiles, and fish that are carried in the store.
My training consisted of 8 weeks of doing stock and planograms in a rat infested store. We were not taught the fundamentals of how to care for anything at anytime, and their concept of "the wellness room" is but a cruel joke. The "wellness" room is basically an out of the way area not available to customers where they put every living creature that is sick, oftentimes never taking them to the vet as it is "too expensive".
I was then sent to a store, where thank God, I had a staff that could train me on the basics of caring for everything in the store. And such a dedicated staff that would go above and beyond fighting a losing battle against the overly high mortality rate due to the fact that the majority of the animals, fish, birds and reptiles were poorly bred and sick to begin with.
Many, many times we received hamsters with wet tail and respiratory infections, fish that were already so stressed from sitting on a dock for 80 hours that they had a variety of conditions that most times led to euthanasia.
Didn't know that did you? Locked in the safe of every Petco there is a bottle of deadly poison used for Euthanasia. Then in the "wellness" room there is a standing freezer where all of the bodies of every thing that dies gets tossed.
I made it an entire 6 months with the company. You haven't lived as a retail manager till you talk to one of your associates who held a sun conyer baby in her hand while it died as it was sent to us sick and there was nothing we could do. And trust me, everyone cried because, bless all of THEM, no matter how few hours they were given, those associates did the best they could to save lives.
The store I managed was one of the few that could take our sick animals, birds and reptiles to the vet. Depending on the cost, if it was "worth" saving we would be given the medication and whatever was sick and sent on our way.
Unfortunately, not everyone that works at Petco is vet-trained to administer shots, or use a syringe to inject medication into their mouths.
If the treatment was going to be too expensive, EUTHANISIA. There is actually a PETCO approved vet that all the stores use that the managers and staff nicknamed "DR. Death". This is primarily where we took reptiles and birds, never to see them again.
IT IS TRUE - the Petco stores are given no hours at all to cover their stores. The primary concern for the business is to get the freight out and keep the store stocked. After all, the exhorbitant markup on food is where the money is, not at all in the living, breathing creatures that Petco loves to brag "Always Come First".
They only come first IF:
You have payroll, otherwise, skip it.
You have people, which you can't schedule as there is no payroll, so skip it.
The freight is done, which is a never ending flow that is so ill shipped you never get caught up, so skip it.
I am so sick of corporate America being able to put up this squeaky clean image of helping animals thru "Adoptions" and "The Petco Foundation". They can throw out numbers all day, and yes, it's great that cats and dogs find homes every weekend, but what about everyone and everything else that lives short, tortured lives so that PETCO can build a ballpark in San Diego.
Even in California, where Petco's corporate office resides, there have been so many complaints against their locations that massive fines have been imposed as well as strict charters created against Petco to ensure the health and welfare of their living creatures.
I guess I finally realized what a bullshit job I had when I got fired, and being an idiot, agreed to work two weeks to get the store ready for a new manager. Each time someone from corporate visits your store, you are evaluated on a numbers system 1-100 on the quality of the live care in your store. The Division person in charge of the health and welfare for all the Petco locations in the southeast gave the store a rating of 80. Then the division manager came in behind him and changed it to a 98 so the new manager checking in would look good his first week. So much for accountability!
Way to go m.M.!
Lovesanimalshatespetco
AllCities, Georgia
U.S.A.
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